Permanent magnets formed of rare earth-cobalt alloys have been known for some time and find applications in many areas such as inertial instruments, travelling wave tubes, loudspeakers, DC motors and generators, magnetic bearings, brakes and clutches, as well as actuators and sensors in general. Typical processes for providing such permanent magnets having included sintering of a metallurgical powder of the rare earth cobalt alloy. The sintered product is aligned in a magnetic field and compacted at room temperature. The sintered product is finally densified at elevated temperature to achieve a high density. Such magnets have found substantial applications in industry, but suffer from a loss of magnetic properties during the aligning and densification steps, such as a loss in intrinsic coercivity to a figure at least an order of magnitude below the theoretical maximum. Mechanical strains in the magnet also result from rapid cooling during the treating process used to minimize loss in coercivity which occurs at intermediate temperatures. These degraded magnet characteristics result in low magnetization and poor flux stabilities in the magnets, thereby impairing their values in many of the applications noted above.